Colour of Time: A New History of the World, 1850-1960

The top five Sunday Times bestseller. 'Breathtaking' Daily Mail. 'Astonishing' Sun. 'Shimmering' Spectator. 'Extraordinary' Daily Telegraph. The Colour of Time spans more than a hundred years of world history from the reign of Queen Victoria and the US Civil War to the Cuban Missile Crisis and beginning of the Space Age. It charts the rise and fall of empires, the achievements of science, industry and the arts, the tragedies of war and the politics of peace, and the lives of men and women who made history. The book is a collaboration between a gifted Brazilian artist and a leading British historian. Marina Amaral has created 200 stunning images, using contemporary photographs as the basis for her full-colour digital renditions. Dan Jones has written a narrative that anchors each image in its context, and weaves them into a vivid account of the world that we live in today. A fusion of amazing pictures and well-chosen words, The Colour of Time offers a unique – and often beautiful – perspective on the past.

A clever, deftly executed book... Marina Amaral has chosen 200 black-and-white photographs, taken between 1850 and 1960, and skilfully colourised them, which gives them new life, new relevance and new power... Dan Jones gives a nicely thoughtful commentary to it all', Purists argue that colourising black and white photographs is sacrilege, but the world has always been in colour... Truth be told, monochrome is a contrivance. Human experience is always colourful', [The Colour of Time] does something simple yet extraordinary. It takes black-and-white photos of historic events and colours them in. The effect is transformative, There is something of The Wizard of Oz about Marina Amaral's photographs. She whisks us from black-and-white Kansas to shimmering Technicolor Oz... When you see Amaral's coloured portraits, you think: phwoar!... She changes the way we see a period or a person', The effect of colour is far more transformative than you might imagine... [Amaral's] touched-up photographs look even more realistic, and closer to life, than a photograph taken yesterday... Extraordinary'

Marina Amaral is a talented Brazilian artist who specializes in the colourization of historical photographs. Dan Jones is a historian and bestselling author of The Templars, Magna Carta and The Plantagenets.